Nikki Sixx gives update on Motley Crue

Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx has posted an update on the progress of the new Crue album, the first full-length recording by the original lineup in more than a decade. Sixx wrote at his personal blog, "The studio has been flowing nicely. We were all together again today plotting, planning, designing, listening and the band seems to have the old bite back, but we will let you be the judge of that when it's time. I do know the people around us, the ones we can trust, are feeling the magic from the songs, so maybe it's not only in our heads?"

The new Crue album, The Dirt, named after the band's memoir of a few years back, is tentatively due out on July 8th, with a world tour slated to commence around the same time.

Meanwhile, Sixx also revealed that he is dating tattoo artist Kat Von D, the star of the A&E reality series L.A. Ink. Sixx admitted, "She was going through a brutal divorce (as was I) and we were friends. Along the way, she met a great guy...and we were friends through that too. They broke up and we were still 'just' friends...I've never had a friend become the girl. Yes, it caught us both by surprise, as I'm sure some of you."

Sixx's other musical project, Sixx A.M., recently postponed a planned spring tour due to "unforeseen circumstances" and "will most likely hit the road in the summer of 2008." The Sixx A.M. album serves as the "soundtrack" to Sixx's memoir, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star.